Slowly Burning
by MaggsAM
Summary: Fic Request: Lydia's grandmas lake house is set on fire but she's in it and cant get out. Stiles and Scott find out she's there and they save her. Soon after, Stiles apoligizes to her for not being there. (somewaystydiagettogether) For Stydia-Fanfiction.


Nothing made sense anymore, and when nothing made sense, Lydia allowed herself to become a recluse. She wondered if it was a personal habit, or a banshee habit. After all, banshees were known to be solitary creatures. Mysterious and feared, rare and misunderstood, and they never traveled in packs. They were lone, ghostly figures. Floating over misty moors and wailing, with long hair flowing in the breeze-less dark. At least, that's what she read.

Lydia's hands gripped the steering wheel with white knuckles. It was bizarre to lump herself in with such a secretive supernatural creature. Everyone seemed to view her as a rarity. They would look at her with a strange look in their eyes, a mixture of surprise and intrigue, a treasure suddenly unearthed from the ground after centuries of being nothing but a children's fable.

She hated that look.

It was bad enough that she didn't understand herself, but to see it mimicked in the eyes of her friends, of her enemies, it made her uneasy.

She was still consumed by her thoughts when she felt her hands turn the wheel, leading her to a familiar gravel road. Too many times her fugue states lead her to undesirable locations with morbid discoveries, but today she was pleasantly surprised to pull up to the driveway of her grandmother's lake house.

It was just as she remembered, but the grass had grown out and was sprouting dandelions from its lack of maintenance. Now that she was in her senior year, and her mother had taken a full-time teaching position at the high school, there had been little time to keep up with the demand of the house, which was surprisingly still on the market. It was a pain for her mother, who chalked it up to bad economy and nothing more. For Lydia, it was a relief. Her last connection to her grandmother, a fellow banshee.

She turned the keys, cutting the engine and climbing out of the vehicle. Her heels clicked up to the patio of the front steps, and she reached under the welcome mat for the key. When she swung the door open, there was a staleness to the smell of the house, the way houses smell when there is no life inside. It made her stand, uncertain in the doorway.

Something seemed a little off, but not entirely unsafe or foreboding. She chalked it up to the aura. Last time she had been in this house, there had been secrets. There had been close calls and near death and fear. There had been a tape, whirring behind walls, whispering names of the dead and doomed.

But now it was just a house by the lake, and nothing more.

Lydia sucked in a deep breath and marched across the foyer into the kitchen, setting her car keys on the granite countertop. She was bored and hungry, opening the pantry and various cabinets for any non-perishable snacks.

"Aha!" she exclaimed when she discovered the holy grail of snack foods, a still good container of ice cream buried in the freezer. She grabbed a spoon and dug into the creamy treat while looking through her missed messages on her phone. Four texts from Parrish.

 **How was school?**

 **Training tonight?**

 **Let's go see a movie this Friday**

 **Where are you?**

She liked Parrish in the way that she liked Jackson. They were hot, they were interested in her. But Parrish was constantly trying to be involved in her life. And then there were moments that he looked at her and she felt like he was a different person than the one she had come to know. He was a deputy, he was older, he was generally well liked, but there was still much she didn't know about him. She didn't get him at times, couldn't understand why he was so interested in her, a teenager.

A mature teenager, but a teenager none the less.

He was smart and he was kind, but he wasn't on her level. She didn't know if she could trust him the way she trusted Scott. She didn't feel for him the way she felt for...Stiles.

With that thought, she snapped her phone shut and let out a sigh.

Stiles always frequented her thoughts. He was there when she was pouring a glass of orange juice for breakfast. He was there when she lay on her back in bed, ceiling dark and thoughts clouded with confusion. There when she had to re-read her assigned bio chapter because she couldn't shake the image of him staring at her as she lay bleeding and close to death on the floor of his father's office.

Ever since she was stabbed with Tracy's kanima tail, it was like she was back in the boys locker room all over again, with lips tingling and eyes watering from his kiss. She had been unable to shake thoughts of him then, though she had been able to quell them once he and Malia became an item. But now, though his relationship still remained intact and Lydia had taken up flirting with an older man, those submerged thoughts burst again through her conscious, bright and blinding. It was the goddamn way he _looked_ at her. Unmoving until she told him to move. It rocked her to her core, and she remembered when they were sophomores, the night he told her he would lose his mind if she died. Now she knew he wasn't kidding.

But nothing had happened since then. He was still with Malia, and it didn't matter that Lydia wanted him to talk about his feelings, wanted to be with him the way she so desperately craved ever since their kiss. He had soldiered on as if it wasn't crystal clear to everyone in that room that he was in love with Lydia Martin.

She smirked.

She had to admire his conviction, as frustrating as it was. He was determined to be Malia's boyfriend, to be her rock. Even if that meant Lydia was put on the back burner once more.

"Lydia?"

She nearly jumped out her skin as her spoon fell from her fingertips with a clatter, before letting out a laugh. Lydia rolled her eyes and turned to the familiar voice.

"Jesus Christ Jordan, you nearly made me-"

Parrish stood naked in the middle of the foyer, covered in ash and engulfed in orange flames.

It was like the breath was knocked out of her. His eyes burned, yellow and dangerous and he smiled wickedly at her shock.

"Like what you see, baby?"

She only had a moment to let out a blood-curdling scream before the world tilted to the side and fell like a black curtain across her vision.

"Scott, you've got to go faster." Stiles implored, anxiously biting the skin of his thumb as Scott pressed harder on the gas of his car. "How long ago did you say you heard her scream?"

Scott made a violent turn and the car lurched to the side.

"About ten minutes ago." he murmured nervously.

He and Stiles had been studying for an upcoming exam when Lydia's scream had filled Scott's head. He could hear her panic, practically feel the waves of fear roll off her in the far distance, and he'd convinced Stiles to let him take his mother's car, the more reliable mode of transportation than the jeep as of late.

"I think this is it!" he cried, as they pulled up to the long driveway of the lake house.

Scott smelled it before he saw it. Smoke, thick and choking.

"Stiles, listen to me man." he whispered, as gravel kicked up from behind the wheels. "Don't panic, and don't do anything hasty okay?"

But by then, he had pulled up to the lake house that was now engulfed in flames. Of course, it was fruitless. Stiles let out a strangled cry as soon as he saw the burning home. With a quickness that even surprised Scott, he opened the car door and leapt from the passenger seat before Scott even had the chance to park and kill the engine.

"Lydia!" Stiles roared. He didn't care that the flame was so hot he could feel it as soon as he opened the car door. He didn't care that black smoke was coloring the blue sky like a bruise. He didn't care that the whole place looked like it was about to collapse in a matter of moments. He just ran like his legs were about to give out through the open entry way, Scott close behind.

Everything was red, and a heat like he had never known possible made his skin bead instantly with sweat. It was as if the sun had swallowed them whole, and now they resided in it's giant belly, unable to breathe, smoke stinging their eyes.

"Lydia!" Stiles cried again before choking on the smoke, hacking and coughing as he scanned the foyer frantically. He remembered vaguely when he was young, and his second grade teacher told his class to remain close to the ground, because hot air rises. He crouched down, smoke clearing momentarily and that's when he saw it. A pale hand sticking from behind island in the kitchen.

His heart lurched painfully as he sprinted to her body, laying peacefully on the kitchen floor, as if she were merely asleep. He let out a dry sob as he bent to scoop her into his arms before calling to Scott and running once more out the door.

The fresh air hit him like a punch to the chest, and he began to hack and wheeze, chest crumpling in on itself. He felt Scott press behind him, urging him forward, supporting his grip on Lydia's body as they ran together to safety.

Once they had escaped the blistering heat Stiles collapsed on the green grass, gently lowering Lydia.

Her eyes remained closed, and Stiles' fingertips ran frantically over her skin, trembling with fear. Inspecting her dainty hands and long pale legs for any burns or abrasions. Sliding over her eyelids, lips, brushing her long red hair back from her soot-covered face.

"S-she's not breathing!" Scott exclaimed, and with a start, Stiles realized the same. He hadn't felt a gust of air from her nose or her slightly-parted lips.

He didn't think, he just moved, lurching forward to pinch her nose and press his lips to her own.

He dreamed of pressing his lips to hers again for years, he just never envisioned this would be the circumstance.

Stiles gently touched her chin, pulling her jaw back to allow more air into her mouth before reaching down to pump her chest with two hands.

He was shaking so hard he could barely clamp her nose again to deliver more air, and his eyes were watering from the smoke exposure and his overwhelming, all-encompassing dread.

"Breathe, Lydia." he growled desperately as he pumped her chest, vaguely aware of Scott calling 911 behind him.

When he placed his lips to hers for the third time, she began heaving, body wracking with coughs, desperate to suck in oxygen.

Stiles cried out and cradled her head in his hands as her eyes fluttered open. He was openly crying and he was too frightened to be embarrassed about it, even when she stared at him with her big, green orbs.

"Lydia!" he groaned, brushing the hair atop her head over and over.

Scott dropped to his knees beside them, reaching out to touch her shoulder as he shouted directions to the lake house into his phone.

"It's going to be okay, Lydia," Stiles murmured with shaking breath. "Everything is going to be okay."

She was tender and sore everywhere, and it felt like water was lodged in her lungs as she hacked and spit out black phlegm. The paramedics had provided her with a bucket and an oxygen mask, and still she felt as if she couldn't get a good breath in.

Much to the annoyance of the paramedics, Stiles hadn't left her side the entire time. He was constantly offering her water, or aloe, or an ice pack. He had assisted in wiping the soot from skin. She closed her eyes as he gently wiped down her legs, her arms. As he softly held her chin in one hand, wet wipe cooling down and cleaning her cheeks and forehead. He was babying her, and she told him so, but he didn't speak and continued anyway.

"You're covered in soot too, you know." she croaked as she nudged his shoulder with her own.

He wasn't in the mood for playfulness, and she could tell.

"I'm so sorry about your grandmother's lake house." he whispered as the firemen taped off the remains of the black, crumbling home.

"Me too."

"I'm sorry for a lot of things." he continued, unable to look at her, instead transfixing his gaze on his hands, trembling in his lap.

"Like what?"

"Like when you were bleeding out and I couldn't move. Like when I didn't think of that goddamn tourniquet that saved your life. Like when I didn't realize that fucking Parrish was obsessed with you and is a danger to us all. When I ignored you all of junior year to focus on Malia."

He was visibly shaking now, but Lydia wasn't sure if it was with anger or something else.

"Hey, Scott's already notified everyone about Parrish, and they're on the hunt for him right now." she said soothingly, though her voice cracked roughly from the smoke exposure.

"Lydia…" Stiles finally looked up at her, and she found he was looking at her the same way he looked at her when he found her with Kira hunched over, pressing her hands to Lydia's side, soaked in blood. The same way he looked at her when she pulled away from him after she kissed him to stop his panic attack. He looked at her with fear, and overwhelming love.

"I know." she whispered, staring back. "I know."


End file.
